Previews

Chibi Robo

A little robot in a UFO, from little Japanese developer Skip, has landed on Planet Nintendo!

Spiffy:

Interesting puzzles; help a robot clean your house.

Iffy:

Not technically impressive; odd music; mumbles voiceovers.

It's Jenny's eighth birthday. She wears a froghead mask to the livingroom party and she's not happy with her presents -- until, that is, her father brings out the final present of all presents, a mini UFO! What's more, it's a real working UFO that looks like a scaled-down replica of the craft from Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Jenny's dad turns the power on, the UFO lights up, its hatch opens, and a tiny alien robot walks on to the coffee table. Chibi Robo introduces himself: "Pleased to meet you, everyone!"

Chibi Robo immediately wins the hearts of Jenny and her family (including the pet dog) with his incredibly polite Japanese conversation. His next task -- which is where the player gets involved -- is to wow the family by messing around with stuff on the tabletop. You grab the rose from a vase and hand it to Jenny as a belated birthday present. Eventually, Chibi is allowed to leave the table. And so begins a house-based game of exploration, puzzles, and cleaning.

Chibi's objective is simply to get the family's house in order, retrieve lost items, and engage with other characters. At Chibi's side is a flying TV called Tonpi, a kind of Lakitu equivalent, who keeps record of our diminutive Robo's items and progress. Chibi is a robot with an AC power cord (which he can drag around, or to help him move more quickly, pick up and hold above his head), and as such he has to plug into outlets every so often to keep charged. No power makes little Chibi fall over and sleep. Ah.

Although you control Chibi with the analog stick, and in spite of the fact that Chibi Robo is ostensibly a platformer, there isn't much jumping action here. Chibi can, however, produce helicopter blades from the top of his head. This helps him to fly from one surface to another. Chibi can also wear different masks (accessible in an inventory of headgear) in order to speak with various members of the household and (cutely) animated household appliances and ornaments.

As you move through the house you can find new cleaning tools, including a toothbrush and a cotton bud. When Chibi is equipped with these (tap X to bring up the inventory), he can clean the mess that the family has made. Chibi's visor allows the player to survey Jenny's house in first-person mode; the visor's zoom mode brings any grime into focus; Chibi, with the scrub of his toothbrush, goes over and cleans that dirt! It may not sound like much of an existence, but at least our little Robo has the satisfaction of making his host family happy. Challenges and puzzles in the form of locating family members' lost items also add to Chibi's sense of contentment.

Technically, Chibi Robo is not particularly impressive. It's not a first-party Nintendo game, however, so we can forgive that. The game's music is suitably odd, a mixture of sci-fi jangles and Muzak. Oddly, too, characters audibly mumble a few sentences of blurred Japanese when they interact -- but you have to read the text to actually tell what's being said. Chibi himself is a strange yet strangely cute character. In sum, this is a really unusual game. The GameCube's equivalent of the N64's Chameleon Twist, perhaps. Chibi Robo is scheduled for a November release in the states. It is quite a long wait, but unless you can read Japanese your patience will be well rewarded. This is an oddly appealing game, the likes of which we haven't really seen before. Bravo!